E-book reader market gets crowded as Amazon eyes big screen

Publishers, booksellers, and wireless companies are all looking at getting in …

The market for e-book readers has generally been viewed as a two-horse race, with book-selling giant Amazon facing off against consumer electronics giant Sony. Each of their products has a unique twist—touchscreen for Sony, always-on wireless for Amazon—and incompatible DRM schemes. But both devices are built around a screen that uses E Ink technology to enable their extended battery life, and the company behind those screens will happily sell them to anyone. Now, it looks like a number of companies, including traditional publishers and wireless service providers, are interested in taking E Ink up on that offer, and releasing their own portable readers.

Verizon, which has decided to let any compatible device onto its network seems like the obvious carrier choice for any new wireless readers. So it's not surprising to hear that the carrier has been approached; what may be surprising is the level of interest, as the carrier says five different companies have made inquiries. Of course, one of those may be Sony. Representatives of the company have said that it plans on competing with Amazon's wireless storefront at some point in the indefinite future.

Verizon may be willing to let any e-book reader onto its network, but one of its competitors, AT&T, may be actively seeking out partners for an e-book venture. Bloomberg is reporting that the company views the US cellphone market as nearly saturated, and is looking for ways to entice alternate devices onto its network; this seems to have also been the inspiration for the company's foray into the netbook market. The article headline hints that any book reader might wind up as an AT&T-branded device, but the statements provided by the AT&T spokesman are far less definitive.

If the wireless carriers are looking for partners, it appears that they'll have a host of willing takers, most of them among the existing publishers. The costs of the materials that go into printing has been rising steadily, and is one of the sources of strain for the newspaper industry, forcing many of those publishers to redesign their sections in order to save on paper and print. Even if an electronic reader costs more up front, it could potentially save money in the long-term, especially if the publishers can negotiate a good deal with wireless carriers and/or convince their subscribers to pay for the privilege of owning one.

A number of newspaper and magazine publishers appear to be taking this possibility very seriously. Earlier this year, Fortune reported that the Hearst group was getting ready to roll out its own digital reader, which it would then sell to individual publishers. The report says that the device would come in a larger format than the existing e-book readers, one more appropriate for newsprint content. It's intended to be flexible enough to allow each individual publisher to set its own billing and distribution process.

Should the device hit the market, Hearst could win in two ways—it has reportedly made an investment in E Ink itself.

A similar device is apparently in the works from the Detroit Media Partnership, which is a joint effort of the Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News. After a trial of an electronic reader last year, the Partnership is apparently ready to roll out a production model to users next year. This would also use a far larger, US letter-sized screen from E Ink partner Plastic Logic. The bigger screen would allow news content and advertising to be displayed simultaneously.

Meanwhile, fellow publisher Rupert Murdoch appears to be focusing on the next generation of display technology, as he's told All Things D that his group is looking into a large, four color screen for its first foray into a dedicated electronic reader. Elsewhere, it has been reported that Barnes and Noble is considering giving the e-book market another shot, this time with its own dedicated reader.

Presumably in response to the growing buzz, Amazon felt compelled to let slip that it wasn't standing still, and was planning on using the larger E Ink screens that are in the works for a next-next-generation Kindle. All in all, the market for e-books and other digital readers seems to be on the verge of getting very crowded.

For anyone excited about the prospects for competition, however, it's worth pointing out that a crowded field could just as easily mean a nightmare of incompatible DRM on content and readers that don't move with you if you switch cities and allegiances to the local rag. Both Sony and Amazon are also on the second generation of their devices, and the interface only seems to have made it to the "good enough" stage, so it's probably a safe bet that some of the new entrants will be exercises in frustration.

What's more interesting than the mere existence of multiple devices is the possibility that they'll be accompanied by multiple experiments with business models, which would increase the possibility that someone will find one that both keeps the users happy while keeping those that produce the content in business.

18 Reader Comments

Well now this is what I've been waiting for. Bigger screens, color, lower price (hopefully). As for the DRM that really only affects the content industry. For those reading free content it matters little.

As for the DRM that really only affects the content industry. For those reading free content it matters little.

That's exactly what I was thinking. How many times would a publisher have to hear from a consumer "I'd like to subscribe to your newspaper, or buy your book, but you're DRM is not compatible with my reader. Oh well!" before it starts to sink in that they just might be losing money.

Well I guess if we're talking about the Author's Guild, it could be as long from now as it has been since the word "Guild" was part of the vernacular.

How? The most it'll do is make eReaders more expensive than they could be if there was more competition. Besides, eInk did the research to get a patent on this thing; they deserve to make money off of it while their patent lasts.

In addition, what is missing is an account of trends. What seems to be happening in the market is the traditional progress towards an open platform. All the large corporate players start out with the traditional idea that they will obtain a lock on the platform. They therefore deliberately introduce incompatible formats for their content. This happened with video and with audio.

The public which is not interested in their ambitions, and has no intention of buying 10 different devices to be able to read all the incompatible formats, refuses to buy either media or device until they get to a situation where they can read what they buy on what they already have.

Eventually, we get to a situation which closely resembles that with books and CDs and DVDs. Buy what you want, where you want, and play it on what you want. Some companies, like Apple and Sony, have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the modern world. But they eventually get there. We are about half way through this process now, and the idiocy of newspapers proposing their own dedicated devices to read their own little paper will become apparent fairly shortly, and become a footnote to history.

We are going to end up with generic readers and standards, and DRM will fall by the wayside here too. It is important for the sake of intellectual freedom that it does. And this means that Amazon is going to have to change, and so is Sony. But then, Apple abandoned DRM on the iPod, in the end. If they can, anyone can.

I just really wish I could get one of these larger ones with the capability to read pdf files on. Mainly because I have to read a ton of scientific papers and I hate staring at a regular LCD screen all day to do so, but printing them all off just doesn't seem justified either.

To me... Full PDF support, with ability to display at least grayscale images (color would be nice, but understandably not currently possible), zoom, ability to take notes in the margin or highlight stuff in the text, and for those edits to be readable in acrobat or Preview. I guess I'm saying that Adobe should have made one of these things already just for scientists to read all of their damn papers.

There's also the whole matter of copyrights and such which I bet is the reason the Kindle is only available in the US. There's probably about 10 million pages of legalese that needs to be discussed and agreed upon before it'll be available here...

Sony's actually on their 3rd generation of e-Ink device.As I recall there was also one they originally only released in Japan, so they are even as experienced as 4 generations.

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Originally posted by y0ssar1anSo there's only a single screen vendor? That'll slow/homogenize everything.

It's a patented techology. There's probably no reason it couldn't be licensed to other companies to produce. But there may not yet be enough intrest to warrant another manufacturer. Or there may be no reason for them to do so if they are raking in the cash now.

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Originally posted by AllyIt is a little surprising that the article seems not to realize that there are a lot of ebook readers which do not originate from either Amazon or Sony. For instance:

I don't think that's the case at all. The article just doesn't explicitly state that there are other readers. This implies there are more, but s accurate in terms of the picture probably available to most people:

quote:

The market for e-book readers has generally been viewed as a two-horse race,

DRM and the price of Ebooks make this technology worthless to me. I can't give the book to my mom/dad/brother/sister when I'm done with it. For some reason they believe an e-book should be 9.95 for infinitely reproducible 0's and 1's.

I could see the price with printed books but with Ebook's it's asinine. I enjoy picking up a bag of books at a garage sale for 5.00. "don't get me wrong I prefer the ability to carry my books in my laptop not in my laptop bag. But until they lose DRM in every form there really isn't a reason to have an ebook. Do they learn nothing from the music industry? Who sells DRM'd music anymore?

When it's easier to "pirate" an ebook with NO Drm. People will pirate them.since that version will work on all their special funky different ebook readers.

Sell me a book at 1.99 and no drm and I'll do my best to make you rich. A quick look at a popular torrent site shows there is no lack of content already available without DRM.

As the old saying goes, why buy the cow when the milk is free. Sometimes you'll buy the cow just because it's better to know where the milk came from. I don't think thats too much an issue with ebooks.

Originally posted by popeye44:DRM and the price of Ebooks make this technology worthless to me. ....

Sell me a book at 1.99 and no drm and I'll do my best to make you rich. A quick look at a popular torrent site shows there is no lack of content already available without DRM..

I couldn't agree with this more. I read way to much to purchase most of what I read, so mostly I get my books at the library and just purchase my absolute favorite authors. If I could purchase E-books at $2 bucks or so, I'd buy dozens every month. $10 for an E-book, which has no printing cost and nearly no distribution cost is just crazy. For that money, I'd rather buy the paperback, which I could then trade for more paperbacks.